From my end? No, Z, no sense. I was making a joke that may have only been funny to me. Do you mean that people are actually making money off of Firefly references? That can't be true, so I don't get it.

I mean that it seems to be the thing to do to get attention. I'm not suggesting that this person necessarily did it just for the hits, it seems to be more that a lot of webcomic creators are fans of the show, but from the outside it can look as if its all about page hits and ad revenue. Either way, the word Firefly in a web comic guarantees thousands of eyeballs see your work.

ETA - and if you have ads on your site, it can indeed be true that it translates to making money. Its not going to make you independently wealthy, but it could help cover your hosting for a while.

A local (free) newspaper writer put in a Whedon mention (even quoting Whedonesque without naming it) and I'd bet dollars to doughnuts he did it to get someone here to link to the online version of the newspaper. So I didn't. ;)